Captain
Matthew Grand and his sidekick reporter James Bachelor are
working as private detectives in London when Grand receives
a summons from his cousin Luther. Lafayette Baker, the head
of the US National Detective Police has been murdered and
Luther is keen for Grand to uncover whodunit. The pair travel
to Washington and Bachelor, gets his first experience of the
States, a country still recovering from the recent Civil War.
What ensues is a trail of clues and red herrings that will
have them chasing down South and encountering the newly minted
Ku Klux Klan as well as glamorous spy Belle Boyd.
This is the second in the series about this pair of detectives
and there is a lot to recommend it, as I tend to find with
all books by this author. As well as the tortuous plot that
will keep readers on their toes, there is the usual trademark
dry wit and a real sense of immersion in the period. Trow
paints a lifelike picture of Reconstruction with people still
reeling from the war, the South defeated and suffering and
the North enjoying a rather edgy peace. This was the time
of carpetbaggers and Klan lynchings, and instantly the pair
find themselves unable to trust anybody in a very different
country from what Grand remembers. Grand's war history makes
him a villain in many peoples' eyes while Bachelor provides
some comic relief as the quintessential innocent abroad. I
enjoyed the first in this series, The
Blue and the Gray (also reviewed on this site), but
thought this entry better as there are a lot of novels about
foggy Victorian London but not so many set in Reconstruction
era America. Expect plenty of action, a frisson of romance
and a novel that feels like anything but a history lesson
but will leave the reader feeling as though they have just
visited the States in 1868. I look forward to reading more
of this series.
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